‘He’s not mine,’ I said quickly. ‘Or not in that sense.’
‘Just teasing,’ she said. ‘I think you can stop worrying about Mike suddenly appearing, so that just leaves the very odd conversation you had with this Saul Vane. But I think you’re right and even if he’s guessed who you are, he won’t do anything about it now he’s warned you off. Not that you wanted to acknowledge the relationship anyway.’
‘Certainly not. I wish it didn’t exist! You’ve no idea how horrible he and Wayne are!’
‘So calm down and try not to worry. Luke starts his dig tomorrow, so I’m going to try to come over in the afternoon. Pop up if you get the chance – or maybe we can meet up in the pub later.’
‘I think I’ll have to go to the Friends of Jericho’s End meeting first, so it’ll probably be late, after eight,’ I said.
‘I suspect we’ll still be there,’ she said. ‘See you tomorrow, one way or the other.’
I felt a whole lot better after unburdening myself. Tomorrow I thought I’d tell Ned about Mike’s vet nurse spotting me … but my other worry would have to remain a secret.
‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive,’ I said to Caspar, as he slammed through the cat flap and appeared like an animated fur rug on the threshold.
‘Pfht!’ he agreed.
Lizzie
The cook at Risings was a kindly woman, who often gave me a cake to eat, or some other little titbit, and gossiped about the family – there was a little girl much my age and two older brothers – and many visitors, so that she was always baking and cooking and only had a respite when the family visited London.
I spent the day of my ninth birthday, like many years before, looking after the hens and then carrying the basket of eggs first to Risings, where I entered the kitchen to see a peevish, cross-looking little girl there, who I knew, from often seeing her go by in a carriage, to be Miss Susanna Lordly-Grace.
She was dressed in what I thought was a very pretty frock and pinafore and wore a pink ribbon in her hair. My own ill-fitting hand-me-down dress of rough black wool, with its high neck and long sleeves, and my close black bonnet, seemed even drabber than usual.
I curtsied and she looked me over and then demanded to know who I was and my age, and remarked how very ugly my clothes were.
‘But I am bored, so you may stay and play with me,’ she said imperiously.
‘I am very sorry, miss, but I must deliver the rest of these eggs and then get home, or my father will be angry with me,’ I told her timidly, which made her cross.
But I was adamant, being more afraid of my father than of disappointing her, and Cook came to my rescue.
‘You must let her go, Miss Susanna, because her family are that strict you wouldn’t believe, like all those Brethren, as they call themselves, and she has her work to do, same as I have.’
I left her and managed to empty my basket before I reached the top of the village street. I was about to turn dutifully for home when something took hold of me and, instead, I went on beyond Angel Row and through the wicket that I knew led to the path down the falls. My heart beat with terror, as if my father could see what I was doing, but the longing to see an angel, something free and beautiful and outside what I knew, drove my feet onwards.
And when I stood at the spot near the mouth of the river, which sprang from the rock face, I knew I had found what I sought and a great peace and happiness fell on me.
28
Angels and Demons
The builder had already arrived at the shop when I got there next morning and Ned had moved away a shelf unit that was hiding the blocked-up opening that had once led through to the lean-to building on the other side.
‘Don, this is my new gardener, Marnie, who came up with all the bright ideas,’ Ned introduced me. ‘We just need you to tell us if they’re practical or not.’
Don, who was a skinny, fair and freckled man, totally unlike my idea of a builder, gave an engagingly gap-toothed grin. ‘We’ve looked at the outside lavs already and the plumbing part would be easy enough,’ he said. ‘And I’ve seen the blocked doorway, so let’s go round and look what it’s like from this outbuilding.’
We went out of the visitors’ gate and Don cast a critical eye at the outside. ‘Those stone roofing slabs tend to stay put, but the walls need pointing up and that door and the window frames replacing. That’s a wide door frame, though,’ he added. ‘I reckon they must have kept animals in here, at one time.’
‘A wide door is good from the point of view of getting wheelchairs through,’ I said, and he agreed.
‘Get one through there easy.’
He examined the interior carefully, especially the blocked doorway and the rafters, which, luckily, were dry and sound. Then he did some measuring, scribbling on a rough tablet of paper.
We watched him, then when he seemed to have finished and was contemplatively scratching his head with the end of his biro, Ned said, ‘So, how easy would it be to make this part of the shop – and add a toilet at the back?’
‘Oh, easy enough,’ Don said breezily. ‘Like when we did the shop, we’d take up the flags and damp-proof under them … replace the door and windows … electric update. I wouldn’t even try turning on that single bulb – it’s a deathtrap …’
He paused and scratched his head again.
‘Knock through that old opening into the shop, but with some good supports and a proper lintel overhead, then make good all walls … install a ceiling …’
The list seemed endless and expensive, but he hadn’t finished yet.
‘Then there’s the plumbing to the new big toilet compartment suitable for the disabled that you want and with a baby-changing area …’
‘Is that all possible?’ I asked.
‘Yes, no problem. You need a good turning circle in the compartment for a wheelchair, so the partition wall would come to …’ he pointed to a spot, ‘about there. Maybe with an entrance through a partial stud wall in front of it, because you’re going to have a display of garden stuff in the rest of this side, Ned says?’
‘Yes, sort of a mini museum,’ I agreed.
‘Pictures of the garden through the ages and a few antique gardening tools in a glass case, maybe,’ said Ned. ‘The shop displays can extend into the other end, near the door.’
‘The idea,’ I explained, ‘is that the visitors come into the garden through the gate past the ticket office, as now, but they’ll have to exit by the new door on this side – meaning they have to pass through the shop to get to it, with all the tempting things on offer.’
‘Smart idea!’ Don gave me a look of approval and made a couple more notes. ‘You’ll need a small ramp outside both doors – the steps are low, anyway – and you’ll have to leave a path clear that’s wide enough for wheelchair access, right through the shop.’
He put the pen and pad back in his pocket. ‘I’ll put all that on the computer later, break it all down for you.’
‘It sounds expensive – and it’ll make a mess in the shop while you’re doing it. We’re closed only on Tuesdays.’
‘Shouldn’t cost too much. I’ll give you a quote when I’ve worked it out. I’ll have to send Larry and Jon over to look into the electrics and plumbing.’
‘Don’s got a trusty team of experts on tap,’ Ned explained to me. ‘He arranges everything.’
Don gave his attractive, gap-toothed smile. ‘I wouldn’t worry about the mess, either, because we can do a lot of the work on this side before we knock through, and then we’ll seal off the opening with thick plastic sheet to stop any dust getting through while we open it up.’
Ned, initially reluctant to part with any more money on something that wasn’t directly related to his beloved garden, now seemed to have moved beyond mere acceptance of the fact that he would need to install disabled facilities sooner rather than later and was warming to the idea.
‘I’ll wait for the estimate and, if that’s OK, it’ll just be
a question of when you can start on it.’
‘Fit you in fairly soon, I should think – and you know me, once I’ve started a job, I don’t hang about.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Ned.
When he’d gone, Ned said to me, ‘I’d better start looking out some old photos and stuff for the museum! Once Don gets going, he’s amazingly fast. He had the shop sorted in no time.’
‘There’s sure to be lots of interesting things in those boxes of papers you’ve got in your study – maybe even a plan of the rose garden!’ I said.
‘I know, but they’ll take ages to go through. There’s a big chest and then a box that’s not much smaller – not to mention what’s in that window seat – and Uncle Theo seems to have well and truly jumbled most of it up.’
‘I could help you sort it out in the evenings, if you like?’ I offered. ‘I’ve almost finished going through my and Mum’s things I brought to the flat, so I don’t mind, and it won’t take so long with two of us.’
Especially when at least one of us was longing to have a rummage through it all, in search of lost nuggets of garden history!
‘OK, we could just rough-sort them first, looking for anything we can use – like your rose garden plan, though I doubt that exists.’
‘Perhaps not, but there’s bound to be something about the temple folly, if only in the accounts book for the materials and labour,’ I pointed out.
‘I suppose so, and maybe more planting lists, or plant orders, dating back to earlier times.’
The peacock must have said the wrong thing to his mate because she was chasing him around the courtyard, pecking viciously at him.
‘On the wings of love,’ I murmured, as Lancelot flapped in an ungainly way to the top of the wall to escape her, and Ned grinned.
‘Where did you say you were going today?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t, but I thought I’d have a look at St Gabriel’s church and Thorstane, then perhaps see how they’re getting on at the dig. Luke and his team start there today and Treena’s got a day off, so she’s going to come over at some point, too.’
To my surprise, Ned diffidently offered to drive me there. ‘We’ve all worked so hard to get the garden open and it’s been hectic all weekend, so I could do with a break.’
‘OK, that would be nice,’ I agreed, and he said he’d bring the car round to the front of the café in ten minutes.
I fetched my rucksack and applied a quick dab of lip gloss, then went down to find that the car was actually a big four-wheel-drive Jeep thing, which you probably needed in winter up there.
‘I thought we’d go up the hard way, and down the easy, seeing as the weather’s good,’ Ned said, driving over the humpback bridge and turning right up the hill.
‘But I thought the road from the top of the village to Thorstane was really steep and difficult,’ I said, feeling slightly alarmed.
‘It is, and there are some really hairy zigzags … but it all adds to the fun.’
He seemed to be looking forward to the challenge, which was more than I was, but I supposed it was better to be going up it, than hurtling down …
Mr Toller, standing outside his shop, waved at us as we passed. Unlike the day of my arrival, the pavements were filled with visitors, looking into the shop and gallery windows. The signs were swinging outside the guesthouses, advertising morning coffee, lunch and afternoon teas.
Beyond the last of the houses the road surface, as I had noticed on my walk, suddenly deteriorated, and as we headed steeply upwards towards the first bend Ned changed down a gear and grinned sideways at me.
‘It’s much more exciting coming down, but here we go!’
The road – which wasn’t really worthy of the name – ascended in a series of sharp zigzags through thick woods. Where there were crash barriers, they showed ominous signs of vehicles having bashed into them, and a deep storm drain down one side of the road must have made things tricky if two vehicles met … assuming there was more than one mad driver living in the area.
Ned took a hand off the steering wheel to point out a half-ruined cottage, the Sixpenny Cottage of the treasure story.
‘You’d have had to have been a keen treasure hunter to hike up here,’ I said.
‘Lots of people seem to find the lure of treasure irresistible, even when it’s as unlikely to be as realistic as this one. I expect the cottage and garden were searched several times over before they finally found that box in the outbuildings, but I bet Wayne and his pals with their metal detectors turned it over later, just in case, too.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I’m sure they have, though they’d have come up by Land Rover, not walked. His friends are like Wayne: after easy money with no effort. I’m off up to Risings in the morning to have a word with him about those holes in my lawn,’ he added grimly. ‘It’s his regular day working there.’
‘There’s no proof it was him, though, Ned.’
‘But I know he did it and I’m going to make it abundantly clear that if he ever sets foot on my property again, he’ll be toast.’
For a moment, the usual easy-going, good-natured Ned Mars was overlaid with something older, grimmer and slightly intimidating. I thought Wayne would do well to keep his distance.
Eventually we emerged from the woodlands onto more level ground, on which stood a very small stone church with a square tower, surrounded by a walled graveyard. The surface of the road as we reached the gate suddenly returned to smooth tarmac and we stopped bouncing about, which was a relief.
‘Here we are,’ he said unnecessarily, pulling up at the side of the road. ‘It’s just outside the Thorstane parish boundary, one of those strange old quirks on the map, and it was always the Jericho’s End church. I don’t know why they built it up here, unless it was because there isn’t much flat land down in the valley for a church and graveyard – or not land that doesn’t flood, as those monks obviously found.’
We got out and walked through a wooden gate and up a gravel path.
‘There’s a Grace family tomb behind the church in the oldest part of the graveyard – two, in fact, because Nathaniel Grace built one there, too. The Lordly-Graces have a newer plot in the graveyard behind the Victorian Gothic church in Thorstane. It’s a pretentious building with a door like something out of a Hammer horror film – we’ll drive past it in a bit.’
The door to the church was open, as Ned said it usually was, only being locked at night.
‘They don’t have anything valuable, just a few pewter candlesticks and embroidered hassocks, and I don’t think there’s a huge market for those.’
Oddly, it seemed smaller inside than out. The walls had been painted white and the pews were plain, dark wooden ones, shiny with use and polish. One worn stone step led up to a simple altar.
It had the indefinable atmosphere of an ancient holy place, peaceful, serene and slightly scented with the lingering traces of flowers and Calor Gas heaters.
The Angel Gabriel window was small and narrow, with a pointed top. He stood in the centre of the large panel, his name on a banner near his feet, in case you’d missed the clue in the church’s name or the large white lily he was brandishing. It was a very ancient window, the pieces of glass small and brightly coloured. The angel’s somewhat androgynous face was calm but stern, and his wings were folded. Over his head, in the topmost section, a host of smaller angels in gaily coloured robes were swooping about, holding what looked like harps and trumpets.
‘The Puritans never smashed this one: when the villagers of Jericho’s End heard what was happening in other churches, they came up here and took it away and hid it.’
‘Is that in Elf’s book, too? I must have missed it.’
‘I’m sure it’s in there somewhere, but it’s an old story and we all know it.’
‘It must have been a lovely thing for the congregation to look at during services. I’m not surprised that that little girl imagined an angel at the falls rather than a fairy, if she’
d grown up seeing this one.’
I looked up at the window again. ‘The jolly little angels at the top look a lot more fun than Gabriel.’
‘Oh, I don’t know … The corners of his mouth look as if they’re curving up and he’s about to smile.’
We walked round the graveyard to look at Nathaniel’s stone and I wasn’t surprised to see a sailing ship carved on it. He lay under a lichened table tomb, surrounded by his descendants.
The older Grace tomb was half-hidden by grass and bushes near the back wall, evidently unused for a very long time and never visited.
Other than that, there seemed to be several local names represented, like Toller and Posset and even Vane – and a few Verdis, too.
‘I think the original Verdis who founded the café were Roman Catholic, but the nearest church would have been Great Mumming, so they must have come over to the Church of England, instead,’ Ned said.
We drove on into the very large village of Thorstane, which had shops, including a small supermarket, a Chinese takeaway and the horrible redbrick church Ned had described.
‘It’s the worst of Victorian Gothic, but over the moors there’s a house in that style that’s truly amazing, even if it is totally over the top: the Red House, where Clara Mayhem Doome and her family live.’
‘I’d like to have a look at that.’
‘It’s in Starstone Edge, which is a nice place to visit in late spring, or summer. It’s much higher than Thorstane and gets much more extreme weather in winter, though.’
He paused at the side of the road a bit further on and indicated a barn-like building opposite. ‘That used to be where the Strange Brethren held their blood-and-thunder meetings.’
I couldn’t imagine that the building ever looked church-like, but now there were cheery-looking posters on a board outside and the doors were painted bright red.
‘It fell into disuse well before my time, when the last of the old Brethren died off and the new generation didn’t take to the idea so much,’ he said. ‘But now, as the community centre, it’s the heart of the village and all sort of things go on in there.’
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 29